wolfie and the sneak

Hi-C has taken it upon himself to paint the trim, the closet doors, and the ceiling fixture, so for the time being I have a break from the foyer. {Which just means my attention has turned to cleaning other parts of the house.}

But I thought you deserved a break as well, so here's a little of what's been going on in the garden:

The zucchini are blooming like crazy, no signs of any fruit yet, though. I don't really count on them for much, but I always wonder how my neighbor seems to harvest 20 tons of squash a day, every day, throughout summer. She doesn't have the same vine borer/squash bug problem I do, but then one day I noticed she'd donned a pair of rubber gloves and was spreading a mysterious powder all over her garden. I guess that means my garden is the safe haven for all bugs, good and bad.

The tomatoes were caged early in the season, outgrew the cages, then staked. Now they've outgrown the stakes and are toppling all over the place again, laden with golf ball sized green mortgage lifters. Cayenne and sweet banana peppers, dusky and Ichiban eggplants, basil and whatever else I fit in there all seem to be happily calling the mulch bed home.


Then there are flowers popping up--the yellow butterfly bush that was a twig when we got it as a wedding gift is heavily pruned back every year, but always shoots up and out into an 8 foot tall display of yellow blooms, the hydrangea are poofy, delicate, and whisper for me to come over and feel the soft petals each time I pass by. . .

and one of the best parts of this garden are the surprises that pop up. We've got a birdhouse right there in the garden, and by leaving seed heads on the flowers (I'm too lazy to dead head) we get a lot of feathered friends stopping by. . .which also means they leave a bit of - ermmm - fertilizer. Which also means they drop some seeds off amidst the nutrients, and each year a new surprise shows up.

Last year it was dogfennel {which is pretty and native, but very seedy and spreads easily through runners--so it had to go away} this year it's a purple coneflower that the carpenter bees like to ride in the wind like a roller coaster.


And there you have it, a little tour around the front yard. The back beds are resting this year, getting doused with mulch and compost--but since the compost didn't heat up quite enough, those beds are filled with all sorts of volunteers of their own. It's a happy little experiment back there. I'll letcha know how it all works out.

And maybe a final post on the front hall tomorrow? Then it's retiling the neighboring room: the den of no return.